Fellow

Christian Cloke

Fellowship Type
  • Postdoctoral Fellow
Affiliation
  • University of Cincinnati
Years
20172018
Iconography of the ‘Other’ on Ancient Greco-Roman and American Money

My project identifies and traces the pervasive influence of ancient Greek and Roman coinage on the imagery of modern American money. In both ancient and modern times, the mass medium of coinage and/or paper money has been critical to the establishment and maintenance of state authority. The messages on money, conveyed through a combination of words and images, were necessary components of the self-presentation of Greek city-states and leagues, the Roman Republic and Empire, and the American Colonies and United States as they coalesced, fractured, and re-emerged as a unified modern nation. My particular focus is on ways in which ancient representations of “others” (“barbarians,” provinces and their inhabitants, etc.) have informed the iconographic language of modern money. Not only does the search for these connections show how Greco-Roman values and symbols are deeply embedded in American representations of national identity, it also makes clear that many of the racializing and othering tendencies of American national, and particularly numismatic, iconography—such as portrayals of Native Americans and enslaved African Americans—are firmly rooted in dichotomies established by the Greeks and Romans thousands of years ago to underscore the differences between elite members of these (highly unequal) societies and the “barbarians” of other cultures.